1987 Pom-Pom Gun

Posted on April 2, 2024 by mwnekoman

1987 Pom-Pom Gun

Happy April Fools nerds, and in the tradition of this blog I highlight something goofy, but in earnest. So here’s the Pom-Pom Gun, part of the Motorized Action Packs. Somewhere between a vehicle and an accessory, each each Action Pack had a wind-up gimmick, where you give it a good few twists and let it do whatever it wants. Most of these look incredibly silly, hence why I chose it for today.

1987 pom pom gun carried gi joe In spite of that, the Pom Pom Gun is only mostly silly? It’s basically just a little motorized gun emplacement, so there’s really nothing terrible about that at face value. About half of the Motorized Action Packs were pretty neat like this, with the real comedy-gold being the Motorized Vehicle Packs from 1988. So there’s sillier things to write about, but I’ve never sought out any of these, and only own this Pom-Pom Gun by chance. Before resellers took over the market, something I used to love about lots was the typical acquisition of some oddity I’d normally never pursue.

It operates in two forms: On the ground with the handles turned backwards or on a figure’s back, connected via a standard backpack peg. On a figure’s back it looks pretty uncomfortable, and I can’t quite imagine anyone firing it this way. Of course, it’s comically heavy even in action-figure form, so good luck getting a figure to stand with it. Hasbro tossed around figure stands so much back in the day, but didn’t seem deem one necessary here.

Deployed to the ground, it actually looks okay. Unfortunately the aforementioned backpack peg faces the front, which is a bit distracting. A figure is required to hold the gun up in a firing position, which makes using it somewhat of a balancing act. The grips are also thicker than I like using, but it might be a little more stable if I wasn’t scared of breaking a thumb on a novelty item 37 years from it’s release.

To the best of my knowledge, these were priced about the same as a figure when they came out: a little less than $3. You don’t get much here for that price (in eighties money, it’d be okay now of course), and it’s odd when you consider that something like Zanzibar with his Air Skiff was only a dollar and a half more. Other decently sized vehicles were only a few coins more expensive than this. For me, it’s pretty hard to imagine a kid going into Sears or wherever and choosing any of the Motorized Action Packs over one of their contemporary vehicles, just for the sheer difference in size. It’s a poor upsell, which I presume is why they opted to start bundling similar items with premium priced figures in the 90‘s (Sonic Fighters and DEF).

If you wait for an auction, you can get one for less than a dollar. If you want one for whatever reason and can’t wait, they sell for around $6. Suffice to say, these are the GI Joe toys nobody ever wanted, not when they came out, and certainly not now. Personally, I might add a few more to my collection; they do have a very nice retro feeling to them, and break up my often stagnant Joe world for a low price. Though, I’ll probably forget I said that in a week or two and never make good on it.

1987 pom pom gun planted gi joe

There’s No Other Content with This Thing, so Here’s my Other April Fools Posts:

2004 Dreadhead Joe-Bob

2001 Big Brawler

1993 Dinohunters Dinosaur

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

Posted on October 2, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

I think in a general sense, 1987 is a very underrated year when it comes to vehicles. Compared to ‘86, you have more fun and better looking vehicles from ‘87, and the only real loss is the Battle Stations, which ended after the Surveillance Port, LAW and Outpost Defender. After typing that, I do realize I’m saying that 1987, the year with the Buzz Boar and POGO is better than the year with the Tomahawk… But 1986 also had the LCV Recon Sled and a bunch of other offerings that were mediocre at best. The Dreadnok Cycle fits into this as a good example of something that isn’t great, but is also better than a lot of the more mid offerings from the year prior.

For a long time, the Dreadnok Cycle was the sort of thing I avoided, mainly because I always thought it looked like something from Whacky Races more than GI Joe. Boring as it is, I’ve usually preferred to imagine my ‘Noks hanging out in grungy civilian vehicles and ordinary Cobra hardware over their own proprietary items. So I never owned one of these until 2017 or so, and even then it was only because I was bored out of my mind and wanted a cheap GI Joe vehicle to pull me out of a slump.

As a gang of bikers (playing their tune), it was cool that Hasbro actually went and made some kind of bike for them, as were it not for the Dreadnok Cycle, the Dreadnoks would’ve never had a bike that wasn’t a recolored RAM. Choppers and custom bikes tend to be really strange looking, so it’s appearance really isn’t that questionable, besides the turret gun that looks a tad more cartoonish than I’d like. Something about the bike makes me think more of a bosozoku bike than a western chopper, I think in particular it’s the tall seat; western bikes usually have small seats while Japanese bikes I’m more used to seeing have tall seats like this. On an unrelated note I just wanted to type somewhere: An expelled Arashikage who became a Dreadnok seems like an idea that should’ve been done, make him a knock-off of Jagi from Fist of the North Star. Maybe as a custom one day…

Past how it looks, the Dreadnok Cycle presents a lot of play value for a medium-size vehicle. Besides it’s driver, it has a swiveling turret, that features what the blueprints call a “‘Blazing’ Shock-Dampened 106m Recoilless Rifle”, which is on it’s own swivel too. The front-wheel turns, and it also has a pair of missiles that seem pretty dangerous, though maybe not as much as the recoilless rifle. It’s good for what it is, though it’s pretty much impossible for a figure to use it’s handle-bars, partly because o-ring joes can’t pose that well, but mostly because the things are just positioned way too high up. The handles are also pretty hard to use on the recoilless rifle, but I’ll give that one a pass since I’m not really sure you’d hold and shoot that like a normal gun anyways.

If you have a lot of patience and some money to burn, there’s some cool recolors of the Dreadnok cycle to collect. Estrela released Ciclofera in 1993, which came in similar but still noticeably different colors. In ‘95 Hasbro released the vehicle again with a missile launcher as the Street Fighter Karate Chopper, before it finally got a convention repaint in ’04, as the Dreadnok Cycle, just in different colors. Buy ‘em all and you could assemble a nifty looking gang of Dreadnok bikes in different colors. At one point I had thought about doing this myself, until I realized it was a lot more trouble than I was willing to put in for the mold.

Dreadnok Cycles have had some very volatile pricing in recent years. When I bought mine less than a decade ago (I mentioned it, but I can’t remember what year exactly) I paid around $8 for it. Then the coof-collector saga happened, and the price sky-rocketed to a whopping $50, where it had been just a year or so ago. Now though, prices are quickly falling, and it’s more common that you can get a good one for less than $20. The red deflector shields on the turret seem to be the item that’s most often missing or broken (they don’t stay on good), but even if you get one missing those, you can find replacements with relative ease. It’s a good vehicle and I’m glad it’s coming back down to a more reasonable price now that the normies are going back to kayaking and prescription drug addiction or whatever they do when they’re not ruining toy collecting.

1987 Dreadnok Cycle Links

Diorama – Island Raid (Forgotten Figures)

3D Joes

1987 Techno-Viper

Posted on September 18, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Techno Viper

At a glance, I would’ve one time told you that the worst year of ARAH figures was 1987. It’s a very unique line-up of toys, as in the course of about three years you go from mildly realistic contemporary military costumes in 1985, futuristic sci-fi designs for 1986, and then you wind up on 1987, which mixes pulp fiction with super-villains. It’s an unappealing transition, but even among the wacky designs, there’s hardly a figure from ‘87 that’s truly bad (And that one figure is probably Golobulus.). A few figures are even stand-out classics, like Falcon and Outback; for the Cobras, it’s easily the Techno-Viper.

Besides that I like the figure a lot, I realize I don’t have many substantial observations to make about the Techno-Viper. I think part of that’s because I’m a little nostalgic for this figure, which is something I don’t often feel about GI Joes, or much of anything. This was one of the first Joes I bought when I got into collecting vintage stuff when I was around 15, along with V1 Major Bludd, a Lamprey and a Stinger Driver. I think that’s a bit of an odd scenario, since I know most of you didn’t buy toys as a teenager, and likewise, I think people are usually more nostalgic for their early childhood. For me though, it was a good time: toys were cheap, and I didn’t have much better to do than daydream about plastic terrorists from the Cold War, and occasionally take some odd photos of them while learning how to do that. I still sometimes think about that mish-mash selection of Cobras going on missions, only for the fact that I got them at roughly the same time.

There’s a lot going on with the Techno-Viper that makes him such a cool figure. I think first and foremost the idea is a lot of fun. They’re basically combat engineers and maybe a little more, which makes them versatile characters you can always pepper in to a few scenarios. As the only generic, single-carded Cobra in his year, having a guy who mostly only fills a support role seems a little tame, but he works as a nice replacement for the Tele-Viper who would’ve been discontinued by this point, and he’s a little more action-oriented than that figure too.

Another thing they have going for them is looks: The Techno-Viper is one of the most visually appealing Cobras ever created. The purple and dark-purple colors are really eye-catching, and do nicely to compliment Dr. Mindbender. It’s a really well painted figure, and all of the major details and elements present on the sculpt are highlighted with a few colors of paint. The only thing about the sculpt I’ve never been to keen on his his helmet: it’s a little soft looking and more vaguely shaped than what you see on his card art, the size and paint on it are still very good though.

Finally, his accessories are absolute winners. He includes a hydraulic clamp (usually called a claw, but I think the card calls it a clamp), a sledgehammer, a wrench, a plasma rifle, a backpack and two hoses that hookup his tools to his backpack. There’s a lot of fun that could be had posing him with his various tools, and it’s very nice they have thin handles that let him hold them really easily. Without his parts, this is still a very fun figure with some uses, but these accessories are really one of the main factors that make him stand out.

V1 Techno Vipers remain relatively affordable figures most of the time. In general you can get a good one, mint and complete for around $13; BiN’s commonly go for around $20. This figure is especially prone to elbow cracks, so you might want to look out for that when buying one. Oddly, I’ve noticed prices can be really inconsistent on some of these, where sometimes figures with a lot of damage will outprice relatively mint examples. In particular, the elbow cracks don’t seem to stop people from randomly paying way more for a figure.

1987 Techno Viper Links:

1987 Psyche Out

Posted on August 21, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Psyche-Out

As I looked through prospective candidates for this blog post, I came up with nothing I really felt like writing about. Really, I have several Cobras that I fancy for a rant right now, but I wrote about the Crimson Guard Immortal last week, and if I do Cobras back to back, I’ll run out of ones to write about too quickly. It would’ve been a good reason to skip posting at all, but as I skimmed through my photos looking for some Joe I have at least two pictures of to write about, I realized Psyche-Out fit the bill.

“But in that second picture, he’s just in the corner! Shouldn’t I find some other use for Psyche-Out and post about him then?” I thought to myself, but that’s the thing: I’ve owned this figure for closer to a decade now, and I’ve only thought to use him twice. I never hated Psyche-Out, not enough to verbally declare it anyways, but the figure is just downright boring. More so the character, but the toy doesn’t do much to really make his specialty seem more compelling.

For a while, I thought that maybe the colors were something I found off putting about Psyche-Out. I wound up getting the Night Force version a few years after this one, but that still didn’t help me want to use him any. Opposite to that thought, I think the colors are one of Psyche-Out’s strong points. Sure, his shirt is a pretty bright shade of green, but at least it looks nice, and it contrasts nicely with his dark grey pants and red highlights. Some of his colors match up pretty well with ‘86 Roadblock, and Cross-Country, and the bright green’s not to far off from Sci-Fi. So contrary to the assumption that the colors are bad, he actually pairs up pretty well with a few contemporaries.

Still, as an action figure his specialties are just too boring for me. Yeah, psychological warfare is real, and often involves some sinister stuff (Some of which we experience in our everyday lives!) but what does he do that’s actually fun? From the comics, all I remember was his appearance in Sierra Gordo, where he stood there with an M-16, a role where he would’ve been interchangeable with anyone else.

His accessories go along with his weirdness. You get a pistol, two clip-on dishes for his wrist, a backpack, and a handheld… uh… Radio… Paranoia… Inducer, thingy. I guess he points his radar dishes at Cobras and makes them worry if they turned the stove off before going to battle or something. The whole set-up is okay, but with all of his gear on he looks incredibly dorky; it reminds me of the things people used to make with those old AOL disks you used to get in the mail every other day. His pistol is nice, nothing special, but an option in my armory of GI Joe sidearms. Looking at it, I get the sneaking feeling that it’s based on a real pistol, but knowing how odd some of these Joe guns are, it’s probably something so obscure I’d never be able to identify it. Speaking of that pistol, I didn’t comment on his sculpt: on his chest, there’s an empty pistol holster, which I thought was a nice little reference to the part he comes with.

You can get a mint complete Psyche Out for $12 pretty often, which isn’t much considering the fact that all of his dish-equipment is made of two pieces that can come off, in addition to his head antenna. So all in all, he has nine parts that could rather easily get lost. In that way, I could see him being a much more expensive figure, but that would be if he really served any purpose. In many ways, he’s really the Joe equivalent of Raptor: A well executed figure somewhat wasted by a boring and outlandish idea.

1987 Psyche Out Links:

1987 Cobra Maggot

Posted on July 31, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Cobra Maggot

Although it gets somewhat away from any sort of real-world vehicle, a popular gimmick of the late 80‘s was vehicles that split into smaller items and battle stations. Within the sci-fantasy world of GI Joe, it works incredibly well and made for some classic vehicles, which includes the Mean Dog, the BUGG and the Maggot, among others. All of those toys represent vehicles that could never really exist, but are still very good just for the high amounts of play value they provide to a collection.

I really like artillery items. To me, these have been my favorite GI Joe vehicles since I was a kid, as it acts as a simple objective for either side to be fighting around. I don’t know if this was inspired by video games I used to play, or if I just have a better memory of a few game stages that lined up well with my imaginations, but either way, a vehicle like the Maggot was really all I would need for a play session. Of course I didn’t own a Maggot until I was 16, but that doesn’t matter.

The Maggot splits into three smaller items, which grants you an immobile turret, a front-cab, and a command station. Without the turret, the other two components don’t do a whole lot in a action-oriented sense, but it still provides some fun opportunities. Flipping out the legs and setting up the turret is fun, but the main point is that it reveals the computer station underneath. This is a well detailed and fun little compartment to stick a figure, and it adds a lot of play value to the Maggot as a whole.

With the turret on it’s own, one issue that arises it that it no longer has the ability to aim left or right. For that reason, I much prefer the look and function of the Maggot with all of it’s components together rather than them being separated. While I’m focused on the turret/main gun, something I find frustrating is that mine no longer holds up very well. The gun barrel is given tension by a clip in it’s socket, that I assume has warped just enough over time to no longer hold the gun up on it’s own. Frustrating, but it’s 36 years old, so what can you say.

The front cab is fun too. The idea of it just rolling off on it’s own seems a little funny to me, but I guess it could be used just for towing extra turrets, so one cab could move two guns from location to location. This part of the vehicle has two guns, and the removable engine cover (Under the cover, you can also see the main gun’s loading system, which is neat.). I wish the driver could be hidden a little better inside the vehicle, but it’s alright as is.

I think a strong appeal of the Maggot is the way it looks kind of similar to a WWII German self-propelled gun. The shape of the turret especially reminds me of parts of the Hummel and a little of the Nashorn, mainly for the open-topped design they went with. It does a lot to make the vehicle seem more realistic and grounded, which I think strengthens it’s appeal as something that’s both fun and reasonable looking (rather than something like the Mamba, which is fun, but definitely not reasonable looking).

You can get a complete Maggot for around $30 on a good day, and prices right now aren’t much worse than what I remember from over a decade ago. There’s a radar dish that goes on the front cab’s rear gun, which is usually missing, though it’s not something that seems to carry a ton of value either. There’s enough demand for it that reproductions exist, which of course is another option if you feel like going that route. Regardless, the Maggot is a fun toy that doesn’t cost a lot of money, which probably means it’s still underappreciated.

1987 Cobra Maggot Links:

Forgotten Figure

3D Joes

1987 Nemesis Enforcer

Posted on March 21, 2023 by mwnekoman

1987 Nemesis Enforcer

In some ways, I feel like you can’t have an opinion about Cobra-La that’s not an opinion about GI Joe: The Movie. Partly, I think that’s because these toys would have no reason to exist if not to be the movie’s new villains. So if you like the movie, you probably like Cobra-La. If you hate the movie, you probably hate Cobra-La and the Cobra-La Team 3-pack. For me, the movie is an absolute guilty pleasure, and I’m open Cobra-La because of that; the same thing is pretty much my opinion of Nemesis Enforcer.

As a design and concept, Nemesis Enforcer provided GI Joe with an interesting opportunity to do some very odd things. I feel like this something crucially missing from modern interpretations of the brand, as Nemesis Enforcer really has a lot more uniqueness and identity embedded in him than your run of the mill Ghost Clancy: Call of Honor-inspired commando toy. There’s a deeper imagination present here of the kind of enemies GI Joe might face, which in Nemesis Enforcer’s case, is an abominate and soulless creation of an ancient bio-mechanical society. It’s like something from a super market tabloid, and in it’s own way I find a great deal of interest in that.

Uniqueness aside, Nemesis Enforcer is not the most breathtaking figure I’ve laid eyes on. I like the Royal Guard a lot better, though Nemesis Enforcer is leaps and bounds better than Golobulus, if only for the fact that the lower half of the toy isn’t a green-turd. I feel like the figure suffers from the fact that the sculpting on his outfit is a little more vague, and at the same time, the details of his face don’t contrast very well. Speaking of his face, I think it’s neat they painted his eyes as a pair of eerie white dots as opposed to painting them normally, but again, it doesn’t show up very well.

Nemesis Enforcer takes the liberty of using some fairly unusual colors for a Cobra. 1987 was the year where purple became a Cobra color, but on Nemesis Enforcer, it’s more of a lavender shade, much lighter than the Techno Viper or the Hydro Viper from ‘88. It’s paired with red details and some tan/off-white, along with a few other colors for small details (silver on his arm spikes and white for his aforementioned beady-eyes). These colors accentuate him nicely, and give him the feeling of something a little bit older than his release year. The kitsch colors make me think of a comic-book villain from the 60‘s or early 70‘s (I guess Magneto fits that criteria).

His parts are very odd. He comes with no ordinary weapons, but instead a pair of backpacks representing the appendages he could spontaneously grow on his back, one that features a pair of bat wings, and another with a series of green tentacles. Both are made from a soft, rubbery plastic, which is pretty unique to this figure. It’s hard to justify a GI Joe with no real weapons, but as a kid I would’ve probably liked this a lot. I loved Guyver and characters that had blade-appendages on their arms, so he would’ve probably found some roles among the likes of Blanka. Likewise, these backpacks would’ve probably seen plenty of use with the Star Brigade. Makes me sort of sad the tentacles never saw a use again, using it as a parasitic growth on some random Cobra repaint would’ve been really cool.

A mint, complete Nemesis Enforcer is worth about $10, though ones with the filecard consistently hit $20. Relatively speaking that’s not too expensive, though as a maligned faction, Cobra-La has never been popular, which has shown through to the pricing of these figures for years. I find Cobra-La a lot of fun as some kind of novelty, and also because I liked the movie, so I’m glad figures like this one remain affordable when most Joes are not.

1987 Nemesis Enforcer Links:

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

Posted on November 14, 2022 by mwnekoman

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

The weird thing about the Battle Force 2000, is that half of their vehicles are as lame as you’d expect, and half are cooler than they honestly should be. A great example of the later can be found in the Sky Sweeper, which has become a go-to vehicle in my GI Joe armory, and it even has a life away from the Battle Force 2000, too.

I have a slight fascination with the Battle Force 2000, which definitely makes me confront how much my tastes have changed over the years. When I was a kid and up through my early collecting years, I hated this group more than Cobra-La. The pulpy sci-fi aesthetic just seemed so chintzy and out of place to me. I remember looking at them online with my brother, who explained to me that in the comic they all died except Dodger; which sounded a lot cooler than it really was. That changed at some point years ago, though I still don’t like them a lot.

All of the original Battle Force 2000 vehicles had a gimmick, where you could combine pieces from each to form the Future Fortress. I have to give it some credit as an example of where the line kept trying to do new things and innovate, but this was a horribly corny and greedy idea (you had to buy EVERY vehicle to assemble the set). It’s also crappy, in that certain vehicles were more compromised than others to include a Future Fortress piece: This Sky-Sweeper has only a small block on the back, which looks fine, though the Marauder for example, fared less well. Then again, I’m really not sure what the Marauder was supposed to be in the first place, so maybe that one was just a bad idea overall.

That aside, the Sky Sweeper is an excellent vehicle, and by far my favorite anti-air vehicle (I like it better than the Armadillo and the Asp!). It’s the perfect size, with a similar profile to the ‘83 HISS, just trading some height for a little extra width. The guns are large and look powerful, with two side guns and a turret in the back, plus four missiles. Thanks to it’s nice size, the vehicle is fairly roomy, and it’s easy to fit any driver you want (including bulky figures like Knockdown), and there’s foot-pegs for several more commando friends to hitch a ride. Overall, it delivers a lot of play value for it’s size, and that’s probably the vehicle’s strongest point.

If there’s one thing I don’t like about this vehicle, it’s the turret on the back. At a glance it looks pretty good, though almost all of my issues with this toy revolve around this turret. There’s nothing there to hold the gun up, which means most of the time it just flops around freely. It also lacks any sort of control sticks for a figure to hold onto, meaning you just have to play pretend back there. Usually you can find a way to reason out the turret with no controls, though here it’s a fairly glaring flaw.

A surprisingly nice detail here is the clear orange headlights above the canopy. It’s strange and unusual for an ARAH vehicle to feature something so nice, when most headlights prior and after were represented by stickers. You didn’t even see this detail make a comeback much until 25th Anniversary, when clear plastic lights were added to the VAMP mold and the Arctic HISS. I’m sort of left wondering if the BF2000 vehicles had some gang-molded parts, as it would make a little more sense if the Sky Sweeper’s lights were just an extra tacked onto the mold for the Vector’s canopies.

I’m pretty mixed on the Battle Force 2000‘s signature colors, which you can see represented on the Sky Sweeper. On the plus side, the silver, green and blue mixture is pleasing to the eye and sets them apart from the sea of olive GI Joe vehicles that were still being pumped out to that point. With that said, silver is not really a realistic color for a tank, so it mildly requires more suspension of disbelief than some of the fluorescent colors you’d have seen in the 90‘s. Assuming the mold was still around, I think it’s a shame the Sky Sweeper never got a repaint, as a green/beige one could’ve been interesting as a beefed up Armadillo.

Sky Sweepers tend to run around $20, sometimes more or less depending on shipping, but it’s usually somewhere around there. Sadly, finding a complete one does require a fair bit of hunting. The antenna, headlights, and one or all of the missiles can often be missing. Truthfully, it’s not hurt too bad by not having the antenna or the missiles, but the headlights looks amazing, and you definitely don’t want to miss those.

1987 Sky-Sweeper (Battle Force 2000) Links:

3D Joes

1987 Taurus

Posted on June 6, 2022 by mwnekoman

1987 Taurus

A lot of Joe fans classically dropped out at 1987, and for years it was generally held as the year Joe quit being cool. This was probably caused in large part just by ARAH’s older fans aging out at that point, though there’s a definite shift in ‘87 that I don’t think struck a chord with most. The Cobra’s became way sillier, the colors became brighter, and the toys were largely pushed by GI JOE THE MOVIE, which was polarizing to say the least. Taurus has a lot of those hallmarks, though I think he’s an underutilized character in spite of all that.

Of the Renegades, Taurus is probably the least popular. Everyone loves Mercer, and while Red Dog isn’t that popular, he garners some interest from time to time. Taurus though, seems like one of the least popular Joes in the line. I suppose I could imagine some reasons as to why, including the yellow shirt, ‘86-style bulbous head, red eyes, and his relative lack of a specialty. The last one’s kind of a recurring problem with the Renegades, as while most GI Joes represent some odd military role, these guys were just churned out in a three-pack as what feels like A-Team expies. I see some good in that, though the Renegades as whole feel kind of phoned-in.

Because of his formerly mentioned lack of a fan base, I got a Taurus figure off eBay when I was 15. He was an early addition to my o-ring collection at a time when I was changing how I thought about life and toys in some ways, so I have some biassed sentiment around him. Back then, my parents thought Paypal was a scam that would get all of your money stolen, so I could only buy stuff off eBay when I had enough for a $25 pre-paid card to use. Because of this, I was very limited in what I could buy, and I’d always have a few dollars left over where I could only get something really cheap. Thanks to that though, I took notice of Taurus, who’s toy I’d never seen before, and who I barely remembered from the movie. It was fun for a few dollars, and it gave me the opportunity to discover a figure that seemed totally new, and find an interesting role for in my collection.

His bio is both somewhat interesting, and yet leaves something to be desired. His birthplace being Istanbul definitely makes me think about where’s he’s been and how he might’ve ended up with GI Joe, but the rest of the card doesn’t say much about that. The text about the Renegades is interesting, though there’s nothing much about Taurus besides the typical crazy/dumb tough-guy shtick. I like to imagine him as more of an intelligence operative, always discreetly gathering information in key areas, often operating alone. Also, because I hate The White Clown from the comics, I like to imagine Taurus replacing him in those stories, like in #66. Since The White Clown was a civilian and not a Joe, I just adapt it to imagine that most Joes think Taurus is a civilian, not knowing he’s actually on their team.

Taurus has a pretty solid sculpt too, though there’s elements I can imagine might bother some more than others. As I mentioned before, he’s got a somewhat bulbous head, though, I’m not really offended by it that much. I think the facial hair kind of hides how big it is (A benefit also enjoyed by Ripper.), While I kinda like the distinct look it has, his knee-pads bother me a bit for the way it looks when you bend his knees. Overall, he’s got a really strange look with the pointy shoulders, yellow shirt, sculpted facial hair and a few other details, but I like it. The character has room for a lot of creative liberties given that he’s not meant to be a stereotypical military professional.

Because this was the figure I got as a broke teen, I never got Taurus’s parts. Though, part of the reason I was okay with that (and never rectified it), is that his parts aren’t all that great. Like the other Renegades, Taurus’s backpack is just a rust-colored version of Recondo’s. His other part is a pistol, apparently a Claridge Hi-Tec C9. When I first got this figure, I saw that gun online and thought it just looked like an undetailed carbine, but I wasn’t aware it was based on a real gun. I’m always fairly stunned by some of the obscure guns featured in ARAH, and while they may have just been pulled from a gun magazine, I think it shows some impressive attention to detail. Still, I don’t often find an obscure pistol to be the most interesting choice of weapon for him, and the recycled backpack definitely makes the release seem more like filler.

A complete Taurus tends to sell around $10, though the pricing is oddly inconsistent on him. Occasionally, he goes for closer to $20, which is odd and certainly way more than he’s worth. Taurus has an advantage over Red Dog in that his pistol is much larger, and thus much harder to lose. I find a lot to like in him, but realistically, he’s a c-tier figure at best, and it’s hard to imagine someone paying more than a few dollars for him.

gi joe renegade 1987 arah Taurus cobra hasbro vintage toy

An old photo from when I was 15. Pretty terrible, but it’s a fun memory and serves as an example of him always being a solo-operator in my world.

1987 Taurus Links:

Half the Battle

3D Joes

Joe Battlelines

1987 Raptor

Posted on October 26, 2021 by mwnekoman

1987 Raptor

To celebrate Halloween this week, I’m doing a profile on Cobra’s very own trick-or-treater: Raptor. Raptor is infamous for not being very good, and indeed, I have some obvious things to criticize him for. I also have some things I like reasonably well about him, though, not so much much as to offset his bizarre super-villain reject appearance.

There’s a lot to not like about Raptor. The first and most obvious thing is that the figure is totally outlandish, and looks more like a rejected Spider-Man villain than a Cobra. As I’m still reading some of the Marvel comics for the first time, one thing I really dislike is how much the character’s media appearances are tied to Jinx and Billy, whom I’m very disinterested in. In a slightly more redeeming light though, I like that he’s a direct accomplice to Fred VII Cobra Commander, and that gives me some reason to think about the character a little bit.

If he were a one-off type of character, I think the fandom and myself might treat Raptor with a little more love. The problem is that he’s part of a pattern of crazy Cobra designs from 1987, including shoddy characters like Crystal Ball and Big Boa. An eccentric shirtless weirdo wasn’t too far out of the ordinary for Cobra by this point, with Zartan and Dr Mindbender also coming to mind. It’s just that you got this guy, the other aforementioned ‘87‘s, and Cobra-La, all at once, which left Cobra heading in a bad direction, overall.

With that said, the two main issues with Raptor are that his design is dumb, and his character leaves something to be desired. The toy itself, is actually pretty decent. Besides a kind of derpy head sculpt, he has sharp detailing across the entire toy and plenty of painted details to show it. I really like the feathers on his arms and boots, as well, the falcon-buckle looks nicely sharp. All of his details like this are apart of the silly bird-theme, but the toy is still nicely detailed. If his quality were as low as ‘86 Roadblock, there would be no need to even look at this figure, but contrarily, there’s some redemption for him based on his overall sharpness.

I like his accessories too. Like his contemporaries, he lacks a gun which is a sad omission, but his soft-goods cape/wing thingy looks excellent and has a detailed, premium feel to me. Also included is his pet falcon to add to your personal GI Joe zoo. It clips onto his wrist, and sits there, like any other GI Joe bird. Overall, it feels like he lacks something here just for the fact that his parts don’t really do all that much, though it’s worth saying that figure doesn’t look cheap anyways.

A perfectly mint complete Raptor shouldn’t cost you more than $15, although on odd occasions they will go for more since the market’s so bad right now. With even a little damage, the figure’s value plummets and will only fetch a few dollars, if anyone still cares to bother. Most of the time, the soft-goods are prone to tearing, and his falcon is usually missing it’s feet. For me, I was scraping the bottom of the barrel when I finally decided to go for this figure, the same as most GI Joe collectors. Overall though, I’ve warmed up to him a lot, and I’m glad I have one.

1987 Raptor Links:

3D Joes

Half the Battle

1987 Blaster

Posted on June 22, 2021 by mwnekoman

1987 Blaster

The Battle Force 2000 was a relatively decent set of toys, although the extent of their quality ends at that. It’s such an odd sub-team of figures, mostly sold in two-packs and all with such an overbearing sci-fi motif, that they wind up among the likes of Cobra-La in terms of unpopular groups. I mildly like most of them, but they all have similar problems and are noticeably less nice than the figures released around them.

The characterization of the BF2000 is a little weak overall, and Blaster’s no exception to this. It’s a little hard to care for him too much when he’s barely utilized in the comics, and his filecard can be summed up as “hovercraft guy”. Then you have the sculpt, which is nice, but also lacks too many features that say a lot about him. Ultimately, it reduces Blaster to being more of a generic background role rather than being someone I can use prominently most of the time.

It should be said though, that Blaster is a good looking toy, and works well enough apart from his group. His sculpt is very asymmetrical and a little random looking, but I appreciate the sci-fi aesthetic they were going for with this one. He always reminds me of this corny illustration of a “future soldier” from a 1990 DoD video documenting the Advanced Combat Rifle program. Because of this, I’ve always associated Blaster as being a guy who mainly does demo-videos of suspect military designs that will never see the light of day.

One thing Blaster really has over most of his BF2000 buddies, is his color-scheme. He’s got a fairly unique deco and camo-pattern which looks very nice on the figure. There’s also a good amount of paint applications here, which make Blaster look very detailed. While I very much dislike his asymmetrical gloves and those weird ringlet things, it does look more detailed with the extra paint there, so the detail makes up for the weaker parts of the sculpt. The only real gripe I have, is that his elbows appear to be clothed, but are cast in flesh-tone, oddly.

His accessories consisted of a mask and a gun. The mask is usually long-gone with these, as was the case with the one I got in a lot years ago. It’s a very non-essential part though, and he’s rarely depicted with it. As for the gun, I’d really love to know what happened over at Hasbro when they designed the BF2000 weapons. It’s a very terrible, blocky sculpt that the figure can barely hold. Most of the BF2000 had terrible guns like this, and it’s a noticeable step down from quality featured among most of his contemporaries.

Blaster’s are common, and even when complete barely top $15. If you dig around, you can probably still get one cheaper, and he’s very common in lots. In the crazy world of modern Joe pricing, he’s pretty cheap, but that probably just underscores how ambivalent the GI Joe fandom is to this group as a whole.

1987 Blaster Links:

Forgotten Figures

Half the Battle

3D Joes

The Viper Pit

Tag Archives: 1987

1987 Pom-Pom Gun

1987 Pom-Pom Gun

There’s No Other Content with This Thing, so Here’s my Other April Fools Posts:

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

1987 Dreadnok Cycle

1987 Dreadnok Cycle Links

1987 Techno-Viper

1987 Techno Viper

1987 Techno Viper Links:

1987 Psyche Out

1987 Psyche-Out

1987 Psyche Out Links:

1987 Cobra Maggot

1987 Cobra Maggot

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1987 Nemesis Enforcer

1987 Nemesis Enforcer

1987 Nemesis Enforcer Links:

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

1987 Sky Sweeper (Battle Force 2000)

1987 Sky-Sweeper (Battle Force 2000) Links:

1987 Taurus

1987 Taurus

1987 Taurus Links:

1987 Raptor

1987 Raptor

1987 Raptor Links:

1987 Blaster

1987 Blaster

1987 Blaster Links: